LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
LETTERS to the Editor The Wonders of Reagan Molly Ivins's column in the January issue was one of her best. But if she found it difficult to be anti-Reagan in Texas, perhaps she ought to try...
...This "liquidation" fee is seldom paid without a struggle...
...belief, however, that requiring a cross-section of the citizenry to partake of unsoldierly activities is the best check on these activities...
...Both the Nineteenth of September union and the cooperatives seem to me to have strong feminist slants, though representatives of both told me they appreciate the feminists but aren't influenced by them...
...They built the pure-communist agricultural settlements, the kibbutzim...
...Can real humanistic learning take place in an atmosphere of obligatory confinement...
...Opposition to military adventurism, which had come mostly from the privileged, faded and hasn't been heard from since...
...instead, employers who can no longer provide jobs must give their workers three months' pay plus twelve days' pay for each year worked...
...Instead, your magazine pours forth a steady stream of innuendo and distortion in an effort to link any and all space efforts to militarism...
...Papal infallibility and current issues of American Catholic dissent are but recent chapters in the ongoing exploration of that vital Catholic question...
...While I count myself a great fan of The Progressive, I would caution its editors that a certain strain of American "progressivism" has not been free of an irrational and uninformed preoccupation with "the evils of Papism...
...Furthermore, I am certain the volunteer is much more likely to do what he is told—perhaps even fire on the citizens of his own country if they become unruly...
...While this linkage is of primary concern to Ronald Reagan and his ilk, you should be drawing a clear distinction between the peaceful uses of space and Star Wars...
...Telephone (408) 426-7271...
...During World War II, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was an open admirer and supporter of Hitler...
...The bulk of the garment co-ops formed after the Mexico earthquake—including one sponsored by the union—have been forced to close in the face of harsh economic realities that include undercapitalization, marketing problems, and Mexico's rapidly worsening economic crisis...
...It seems the majority of my fellow Oregonians are still touting the wonders of Reagan...
...When Richard M. Nixon ended the draft, he knew what he was doing...
...Pete Wilson New York, New York Palestinians in Exile One statement in Matthew Stevenson's interview with Edward Said ("Edward Said: An Exile's Exile," February issue) struck me as historic irony...
...Also embodied in that tradition is an insistent and virtually irresistible folk-wisdom about the primary importance of the sacraments to the life of the Church...
...Can young adults of seventeen or eighteen be expected to make independent decisions about compulsory service to the State if they have been stripped of their rights by the same State for twelve or thirteen years, and told how to think, what to learn, what to wear, and how to behave if they want the juicy plums of our capitalist society...
...Is the goal of humanity to pour all the resources of the world into the maw of a cancerous population explosion and turn the entire surface of the Earth into one vast Bangladesh...
...He has no argument from me there...
...To be a committed—and, yes, Roman—Catholic is to grapple with all one's intellectual and spiritual resources with the personal implications of a vast, and sometimes perplexing and ambiguous, history and tradition...
...I believe that is still the case...
...U.S...
...The union doesn't face the same financial worries...
...In the process, they also seek a personal responsibility for the mysterious and unfolding future of the Church and its people...
...It also seems, however, that I was not as clear as I intended to be about the two groups' struggles...
...I've never seen a kind word in The Progressive about the benefits mankind derives from an understanding of the universe in which we live, or even about the usefulness of weather and communications satellites...
...To date, eight contracts have been signed and the union has been recognized in more than a dozen other shops in an industry long regarded as impossible to organize...
...Then Tom Hayes, an independent filmmaker from Ohio, came to town and showed his documentary, Native Sons, which poignantly showed the wretched plight of the Palestinian refugees...
...In the conscripted army, the volunteer was regarded as someone lacking in intelligence...
...By last summer, the union's emphasis had shifted to organizing shops and negotiating contracts...
...In the Mexican labor system, there is no unemployment insurance...
...Most people are born into church membership and religious beliefs...
...Ivan Illich says it well in the foreword to Joel H. Spring's Education and the Rise of the Corporate State...
...The co-op we visited was financed by a group of women who pooled their compensation payments...
...For you to say that belonging to the church is a "choice," and that believers "buy in" to abuses of doctrine by a bigoted Pope, is misleading...
...Whether organized in cooperatives or in labor unions, working people cannot sidestep the power of capital over our lives...
...Would the right-wing Israeli nationalists have come to power in later years...
...This has not been the case with Native Sons, which the Public Broadcasting System refused to air, and which has been barred from all major film festivals...
...they don't choose them...
...It is difficult to see how this could be characterized as a struggle that is "more political than economic...
...The owners were also compelled to pay each worker an additional penalty of twenty days' pay per year worked for acting in bad faith—an even more remarkable accomplishment...
...This picture results not only from ignorance but also from avoidance of the Palestinian as a human being...
...I'm an advocate of learning...
...It is one of the few alternatives available to the prevailing factory-style approach to learning—an approach that has produced a curious amalgam of well-oiled, passive, and obedient human parts on one hand and a growing number of psychically disintegrated rebels on the ather...
...G.M...
...Another aspect of the Nineteenth of September union that escaped mention in your report is its striking commitment to rank-and-file democracy and a feminist style of organizing...
...It is my...
...What is truly remarkable is that a few individuals do emerge relatively unscathed...
...By contrast, the cooperatives are portrayed as addressing economic reality: "I need to feed my family," one woman is quoted as saying...
...Like Claudia Kolker, the author of your piece, I spent time in Mexico City last summer visiting the union and interviewing some of its members...
...They are certainly interested in learning about their world, and in developing a variety of skills...
...Included in that history and tradition is a running debate about the ultimate location of spiritual authority— whether it is to be found with the bishops, among the people, or through an inspired individual...
...The primary purpose of the school system is social control for a corporate state, and for an economy which has as its goal the efficient production and the disciplined consumption of growing amounts of goods and services...
...But your equation of the Catholic's commitment with "giving the Pope the right to tell you what to think" gave me much greater cause for concern...
...People become Catholic not by pledging allegiance or "buying into" dogma, but by seeking the mystery of their own spiritual growth in those basic signs—water, bread, wine, and oil—and their meanings which continue to unite Catholics through the ages...
...Forming cooperatives may be a good strategy for some workers in some industries, but co-ops are no panacea...
...We are just nomads...
...the Palestinian is either a faceless refugee or a terrorist...
...Rachael Kamel American Friends Service Committee Philadelphia, Pennsylvania The author replies: Ifully agree with Rachael Kamel about the importance of the Nineteenth of September union's accomplishments...
...Another statement Said made was that "the Israelis still claim that we don't exist as a people...
...Those interested in learning more about the U.S...
...support network for the union may contact Donna Rae Palmer, 417 Second Street, No...
...Containing both reactionary and radical, coercive and noncoercive elements, it is, if one can make such a generalization, a repudiation of State power over the lives of private citizens...
...Even in shops without contracts, women told me owners were more likely to observe labor laws that had long been ignored, a result of the overall level of struggle in the industry...
...My collaborator, photographer Isabelle Lacey, also interviewed women involved in one of the cooperatives formed by those who lost their jobs in the earthquake...
...it was aired on public television and extensively distributed...
...To write about Catholic dissent in ignorance of these fundamental elements of the Church's tradition is to miss the point of that dissent...
...Mary Hessel Cincinnati, Ohio The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...In 1948, they received arms to fight the Arabs from communist Czechoslovakia...
...Claudia Kolker Cambridge, Massachusetts All Roads Lead to Rome Iwas disappointed by The Progressive's all too glib observations on the suppression of dissent in the Roman Catholic Church ("All Roads Lead to Rome," Comment, January issue...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...Hayes had previously produced a film about the refugees on the Thailand-Cambodia border...
...I have never heard such claims, but it is true that there never was a Palestinian Arab state as such—only a region ruled by others...
...It won't work for everyone, but some people will emerge from their tour of involuntary learning with a deep contempt for all things educational and a profound skepticism toward the machinations of the State and its bureaucracy...
...Lawrence.H...
...Equally nauseating were the asinine cracks reported about the Viking expedition to Mars...
...Financial problems were precisely what I discussed in evaluating the co-ops' chances for survival...
...Members meet in "union formation groups" in which they learn to understand their country's labor law, how a union is organized, and strategies for union struggles...
...Implying that Catholics should choose to leave the Catholic Church is like telling a black that if she doesn't like discrimination, she can always go back to Africa...
...Charyl Ray Medford, Oregon Lost in the Stars Ihave noticed with dismay your fixed and steadfast enmity toward NASA in its endeavors to explore the moon, the planets, and space...
...I can also hear the predictable moans of liberals who truly see public education as a cure-all for our social and economic woes...
...I can't help but wonder how the Israeli state would have turned out if the Arabs had let the Jews live in peace in 1948...
...I found The Progressive's Comment to be more sopho-moric than intolerant, but the odor of a familiar old intolerance was in evidence...
...I do not recall seeing you make such a distinction—certainly not in any lead article...
...Until recently, I, too, was largely ignorant of the forty-year refugee status of the Palestinians and what it has done to their lives...
...Whatever may be said for or against the doctrine of Papal infallibility, it simply is not the fulcrum of Catholic belief and identity...
...Kolker portrays the union's struggle as a purely "political" one, with little relevance to the immediate survival needs of the garment workers...
...In the case of the garment workers, more than 1,700 women filed for compensation and all but forty-seven cases have been resolved, a considerable achievement...
...I'm raising four sons, none of whom participate in the government baby-sitting program...
...Haven't you heard...
...Many of the Jews in Israel were socialists...
...Like you, I found much of the recent press coverage of the Vatican's dealings with Archbishop Raymond G. Hunt-hausen and theologian Charles E. Curran "puzzling...
...That may be one reason for the blackout of the Palestinians' case...
...Its main challenge comes from the government-aligned Mexican Confederation of Workers (CTM...
...Plans are under way for a U.S...
...I concede that given our present social structure, there are many obstacles to this radical form of childhood development...
...supporters of Israeli policies apparently want to promote continuing ignorance of the unsettled circumstances of nearly half a million people...
...Said is quoted as saying, "The Arab and Palestinian consensus is the idea of a partitioned state that is partly Israeli, partly Palestinian...
...At the co-op we visited, members had not been able to pay themselves for the previous two weeks...
...The home-schooling movement is an interesting cross-cultural phenomenon...
...3, Santa Cruz, CA 95060...
...American Catholic women and gay men are saying, "This church is our church" and "Ain't gonna let no hate-filled cardinal turn us 'round...
...In these groups they also discuss their lives in their families, the problems they face as women in political participation, and the relationship between machismo at home and exploitation at work...
...The all-volunteer army no doubt contains a percentage of patriots who have the nation's best interests at heart, but my guess is that there is a preponderance of adventurers, misfits, opportunists, mercenaries, and sadists, all of whom might be personified in that hero of our time, Ollie North...
...It is also true that many Arabs moved into the area after the Israelis made the desert bloom and improved the region's economy...
...Regarding my "evident empathy for the cooperatives," the article may have been weighted, through editing, toward the co-ops' story...
...It seems to us that Kolk-er's evident empathy for the cooperatives has led her to misstate both the character and importance of the union...
...But if she found it difficult to be anti-Reagan in Texas, perhaps she ought to try Oregon...
...Norton Madison, Wisconsin The issue of compulsory military or civilian service must be broadened to include the question of compulsory education...
...But I'm convinced that most schools, public and private, do a remarkable job of dishing out a steady diet of predigested pap, squelching the wonderful natural curiosity of young humans and stifling a great deal of innate creativity and brilliance...
...Allen Department of Astronomy University of California at Los Angeles Los Angeles, California Involuntary Servitude Under the heading "Involuntary Servitude," Erwin Knoll inveighs rather petulantly against the possible reintroduction of the draft (Editor's Memo, January issue), on grounds that military life is stupid, distasteful, and disruptive of more seemly professional careers...
...Thus, the union's struggle is more political than economic...
...But with two decades of timorous educational reform behind us, and the failure of public schools to contribute significantly to genuine social change, home-schooling stands as one of the most vigorous educational experiments around...
...Harry Hyman Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania Palestinian exile Edward Said points out that "in the United States, particularly in the media...
...speaking tour and traveling photo exhibit by Nineteenth of September union representatives...
...That is precisely what the United Nations offered both sides in 1947-1948 after the British relinquished control of the area taken from Turkey in World War I. Then the Jews were willing but not the Arabs...
...In fact, though, throughout its entire first year, the union focused its efforts on forcing employers to pay compensation to women who lost their jobs in the earthquake...
...Samuel P. Whalen Evanston, Illinois As a non-Catholic gay man and a radical, I'm amazed at your remarks about American Catholics...
...They say the land was empty when they took it...
...Kathleen Hatley Stillwater, Oklahoma Unions and Cooperatives Iwas encouraged to see coverage in The Progressive of the efforts by Mexico's garment workers to fight for a living wage and better working conditions through the independent Nineteenth of September Garment Workers Union ("Hope Springs from the Rubble," Datelines, November issue...
...Perhaps widespread exposure of the long-standing hardships of the Palestinians would reflect adversely on the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust...
...To paraphrase Erwin Knoll's comment on conscription, "Still, there is something to be learned from public education—though not something its defenders have in mind...
...On the other hand, I do recall such disgusting articles as Milton Mayer's "111 Met by Moonlight" (September 1969 issue), viciously attacking the lunar landings and lauding the mob who preferred to watch rubbish on their television sets...
Vol. 51 • March 1987 • No. 3
